Letter: Another Garden Poem

Editor:
Here is another poem about the Garden of Eden.

Bad Day in the Garden
They eat the fruit, but what do they eat?
We lift the veil for a wary peek.
Through a forest of mystery hiding it all,
We see a body, naked and weak.

This BODY is the garden in whose center grow
the two famous trees, but nowhere a weevil.
Here is the tree of life and the one
of knowledge of good and knowledge of evil.

Because the two trees are right next to each other
care must be taken to avoid the one bad.
For the fruit of both trees is pleasure,
so the pleasure is there to be had.

To be fruitful and multiply, eat from the first.
But eat from the second and no one conceives.
So here we go now:  one, two, three–
Pleasure, shame, fig tree leaves.

Robert Hagedorn
Berkeley, California